GOD AS MORAL BULLY AND AS THE WEAPON OF MORAL BULLIES
We are forced to respect morality which is not respect at all for respect cannot
be forced. It is respect as in a lie.
If you argue that morality is not really true then you are saying it is a lie
and wrong to say that so you are saying there is a morality after all. Morality
always comes out and if suppressed it will come out in a warped way.
Religion says that if there is no God then you have no reason to consider
morality as in justice and love to be binding. In other words morality is not
real and you can make it what you want to be.
After what we have seen morality is a like a battering ram and is not a thing to
be celebrated even if we do need it.
If you need God to have a real or objective morality, and objective morality is
a necessary evil, then that is reinforcing a necessary evil in an unnecessary
way. It is using God to ground the morality and claiming he implements it so for
his sake we should be objectively good and moral. If something is a necessary
evil it should not get any glorification by being attributed to a good God. It
is bad enough and there is a coarseness and intolerance in wanting to confer
sacredness and beauty on it.
If you have to tolerate objective morality and regret its element of force then
you are not doing that by turning it into God or God's law.
Believers however are clear that feeding a starving baby is not an objective
moral principle if there is no God. But if there is no God then their argument
would mean that the only thing that is objectively moral is to deny that
objective morality exists.
So it is not true that you need a God to ground any kind of objective morality
even if it is a misguided one!
The God grounding is an extreme and deranged doctrine and we should not be
rejoicing in their God or religion. It shows that they are willing to use the
baby's suffering to get you to believe. They cannot praise you for helping the
baby for that is the sin of blessing good that leaves God out. But so
hypocritical they are that they probably will.
Does God command what is right because it is right? Then God is not God or boss
for he has to obey moral law but he doesn’t make it. He only conforms to it. In
that case, belief in God or non-belief has nothing to do with morality. You can
be moral without God. You would even have the right to disagree with God on
right and wrong for it is independent of him.
The notion that righteousness is God's character and he didn't invent it and
there is no higher law is just a dodge. It does not deal with the question.
These Christians deny that God's laws are arbitrary. But it is possible that
owing to circumstances that God might have to make laws for the sake of making
them. If there is no one way to protect kindness or justice then why not? It is
better than no law at all. Moral values being grounded in God does not
necessarily imply that his rules are non-arbitrary.
Christians do not like the view that morality is independent of God. If morality
is independent of God, there could be circumstances in which God does not want
us to believe he exists. It might be bad for us. Truth sometimes is bad for us.
Perhaps God makes rules precisely so that in the bigger picture we may break
them and that is a good thing. To stress the belief in God and that objective
morality is grounded in him and to harass atheists for not believing is just
bigotry.
Many say that once you take God out of the equation, morality becomes a
subjective matter, it is a matter of us making up the rules as we go along. This
is totally wrong. Saying you have to make up the rules is a rule itself. It's a
moral rule even if it is a bad one. We HAVE to believe in morality as a
non-subjective reality OR ELSE! Morality in religion is linked to free will and
God supposedly wants us to be freely moral. How religion can tell you to believe
morality is non-subjective or else and say it respects our free will is
mind-boggling. Better a subjective morality than one you are forced or
blackmailed to follow. If God gives you free will and then blackmails you to
believe in morality as a reality what right has he to let you do evil and blame
you? What right has he to say, "I am pure love and have to let people do wrong
for I cannot force them to love me!" That is a lie and an excuse and insult to
those who suffer and die. Both religion and the concept of God are based on an
implicit threat - people don't mind for they imagine that is good for keeping
people in line. But that does not make it right. A morality that is based on
force not love is not a morality though it may be a convincing copy.
The "Only God grounds objective morality" argument accuses sceptics of being
hypocrites and moral relativists. That accuses them of being part of the machine
that declares the holocaust right because it was Nazi culture. If that is behind
the argument, then the argument fails to create morality for it is a case of,
“We have to accept it for the alternative, relativism is terrible.” There is no
freedom or morality when there is that pressure. It might be subliminal or
implicit but it is there. It is going to influence voters and politicians to try
and force.
From what we learned about how you can say the only objective moral principle is
that there are no other principles - this needs to be shouted out - IS THAT IF
YOU WANT TO PREACH GOD IN ORDER TO GROUND OBJECTIVE MORALITY YOU ARE WASTING
YOUR TIME!
We conclude that it is objectively immoral to bring God into the equation if
there is an objective morality. God only undermines it. And he does it for
several reasons. We have seen those.
It is obvious that a person decides to help others then the person should be
free from pressure. It is objectively true. That is important. Its being
objectively moral is not as important.
Morality is a sum-up of rights-justice, love and responsibility. These
ingredients are not equal. Responsibility comes first not love or justice. Love
and justice cannot be thought about unless we have personal responsibility for
they only apply to responsible beings. Morality contradicts itself for
responsibility cannot come first for it forces itself on people!
We conclude that there are a lot of lies told about objective morality. God
makes the whole thing worse and if you use God so that you can endorse morality
you are implicitly admitting that what matters is it not him!